Press

"Majority Action, a left-leaning shareholder activist group that holds American Outdoor shares, faults the company for “abruptly” shuttering the Smith & Wesson Academy without adequately disclosing its plan and for insufficient enforcement of company policy regarding conflicts. It also recently accused company managers of violating an investor resolution regarding political contributions. The group said American Outdoor should have disclosed $1.5 million in gifts to the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation...

Over the years, American Outdoor’s directors have shared various financial interests well beyond the company. For example, Saltz and another American Outdoor director, Chairman Barry Monheit, are on the board of Modern Round, a VirTra partner in a budding chain of entertainment facilities combining virtual-reality shoot-outs with food and beverages. Saltz is Modern Round’s chairman and majority shareholder. That involvement, which the two men disclosed to investors, presumably gives the pair an interest in the prosperity of VirTra, Majority Action says."

INTERVIEW: "This interview with Eli Kasargod-Staub and James Rucker, co-founders of Majority Action, is part of The Money Story Behind the Story series that examines the role of money in critical current events. It covers their ground-breaking work holding gun manufacturers accountable for their impact. Notably, they have been taking a close look at the actions of board members of Sturm, Ruger & Co. and American Outdoor Brands Corporation (AOBC), commonly known as Smith & Wesson—a unique tactic in the broader field of shareholder activism."

"The big fund firms “have to look at sensitivities” of their clients and business partners, said Brian Rafn, principal of Morgan Dempsey Capital Management in Milwaukee, who described himself as a gun-rights supporter and says the firm voted all its 80,000 or so shares with Sturm Ruger’s management...

Eli Kasargod-Staub, co-founder of Majority Action, a group that had campaigned for top funds to vote against Sturm Ruger director Sandra Froman, a past president of the National Rifle Association, called the votes “a failure of leadership” by the fund managers."

"Another community group, Majority Action, is organizing retail investors to push big fund companies like BlackRock and Vanguard, Sturm Ruger's biggest shareholders, to assert their voting power. The group organized about six weeks ago, seeing now as a crucial moment for changing the gun industry."

On Tuesday night, Majority Action, a shareholders activist group, began the process of submitting a shareholder advisory with the Securities and Exchange Commission challenging Froman’s position on the board and citing “archival records” revealing “that she worked with Shockley over at least a three-year period.” The group intended to point out that the Southern Poverty Law Center has called Shockley “an ardent eugenicist whose theories of black racial inferiority eventually made him an academic pariah.”